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The trouble with tracking

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The trouble with trackingOn the wrong track: Today’s tracking surveys ask the wrongquestions - and they ask far too many of them!The purpose of tracking is to provide marketers with informationthat can be used to increase profitable sales in a sustainable way.The problem with many of today’s tracking programmes is thatthey are not set up to deliver this. Share this Opinion Leader 2

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The trouble with trackingWhat is tracking? First of all, they contribute to slow turnaround times.Brand tracking, in our industry, is a generic term for Marketers need feedback about the effects of theirthe collection and analysis of time-series data that arerelevant to the performance of a brand in the market. and their competitors’ marketing activity in time to take action. Faced with masses of data, researchers Brand tracking isMany companies actually run three or more trackingprogrammes, measuring communications will not always know when something significant has happened. The greater the mass of data, the more a generic term forseparately to elements such as brand equityand claimed consumption. likely that significant insights could go unnoticed. Part of the solution is to build intelligent alerts into tracking the collection andThe problem is that the big budgets set aside for these systems. Another vital element is ensuring the relevance and actionability of the data generated in the first place. analysis of time- series data thattracking surveys are failing to deliver against important Data only become information when they lead to clarityclient objectives: they often don’t provide accurate about what marketing actions to take. If you can’t talkinformation, they often don’t provide actionable about the marketing implications of a particular data-information; and when they do provide information, point, then you shouldn’t be collecting it. are relevant to thethey often don’t provide it in time.Too long and too boring Weeding out non-actionable data points and their related questions will help to cut down the length of performance of aRespondents often find tracking surveys too long andtoo boring. Researchers would do well to listen to their tracking surveys. But length isn’t the only issue. We’ve always known that people are prepared to engage in brand in the market.concerns, because long, boring surveys are a big part of lengthy interactions as long as the survey is interestingthe problem with tracking. and relevant. The bigger problem with today’s trackers Share this Opinion Leader 3

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The trouble with trackingis that they are boring. To be more precise, there are So, we can achieve some considerable improvementstoo many questions that are tedious and not relevantto the way a particular respondent makes decisions. We need to own up: by just by making tracking surveys shorter and less tedious. However, this will only take us so far if thoseThe consequences for data quality are dire. forcing people to answer so shorter surveys are still asking the wrong questions.The dangers of asking too much many permutations of theseIn a 2008 test1, people were asked a simple attributeassociation question (the most widely used method for questions, we are drivingmeasuring brand image) involving 10 brands and 12 them nuts. The results areattributes. A week later the same respondents werere-contacted and asked for their opinions again. The low completion rates andresults were revealing. On average, consumers onlyassociated half of the same attributes to the average poor-quality responses.brand second time around.This instability is all the more frustrating when we One of the reasons companies have multiple trackers isconsider that most of these attributes need not be that each one by itself is too long to squeeze anythingmeasured in the first place. We know now that you can else in. Shorter, more relevant surveys will have twopredict which attributes a person will apply to a brand benefits: first, they will lead to more valid data;with remarkable accuracy as long as you can identify and second, they will enable more efficient, holisticthe two or three criteria that are most relevant to that measurement and integration.person – and you know the one or two brands thatthey judge best relative to those attributes2. Yet it’s notuncommon for a typical survey to ask people about fiftyor more attributes for multiple brands. Share this Opinion Leader 4

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The trouble with trackingThe wrong questions – those communications doesn’t. The human brain involves a mix of the thoughtful and the instinctive.and how to stop asking them retains the relevant information effectively, and it We need to dig below the deliberative parts ofWe have always known that there’s a gap between tends not to remember the stuff that doesn’t help the human brain if we want to uncover deeperwhat people say in surveys and what they actually do. in decision-making. motivations; and we need to find ways to do soThanks to contemporary science, we know the various in quantitative surveys.reasons why the gap exists – and this can help us to The problem is that the typical tracker is anchoredfix it. in questions about when and which channel, and A great example of this is the purchase intention then uses these questions (the ones that respondents question. This is one of the most widely used questionsThe first cause is the fallibility of human memory. struggle to answer accurately) as the basis for its in typical trackers. Yet we’ve known for decades thatThrough most of our history, people lived in resource modelling. Models based on such an unreliable at face value, answers to the question correlate poorlyscarce environments. As a result we are ‘cognitive source are, at best, suspect. with what individual people actually do5.misers’3. Memory developed mainly as an aid to takingappropriate action given a situation. It did not evolve A second problem can be termed ‘The Fallibility of Behavioural economics helps us to identify two reasonsto be encyclopaedic. Put simply, human memory is Conscious Introspection’. Behavioural economists are for this: people make fundamentally different choicescontext and event-driven4. increasingly aware that people make mistakes when based on the context and framing of a question – and they allow the parts of their brain that are not good they are also fundamentally comparative. If you ask aPeople retain brand information – both consciously and at certain tasks, to perform those tasks. There are person which brands they are likely to use in future,unconsciously – because they need it to make brand times when thoughtful deliberation works best; they will often name more than one. What matterschoices. Remembering the experience of a brand helps at other times, instinct is what we need. isn’t the absolute score that a brand gets on scales liketo do this, remembering exactly when a brand was ‘purchase intention’. What matters is its score relative tolast used doesn’t. Absorbing brand communications One of the problems with the classical, quantitative competitors. Non-comparative modelling is a dangerous– whether consciously or unconsciously – helps. survey is that it asks the brain to be thoughtful and mistake for tracking surveys.Remembering when and how we were exposed to deliberative when behaviour in markets actually Share this Opinion Leader 5

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The trouble with trackingEasy mistakes to stop making validThese problems are challenging ones – and requireinnovative approaches to fix them (innovativeapproaches that TNS is already using for our clients). Survey data can be at aggregate level and yet wrong about individual people.However, there are also a number of mistakes in manytracking surveys that researchers really shouldn’t bemaking in the first place. These simplistic approachesto tracking include omitted variable bias - whichassumes that outcomes are directly related to own-brand communications spending and ignores the manyother factors involved - failure to take into account the Strong brand relationships form when adverts connect If there is one underlying reason it’s because ourimpact of existing brand relationships in the mind of the brands to things that people care about. Measurement industry does not care nearly enough about respondent-consumer, and a failure to ask the right questions when should be devoted to trying to establish whether or not level validity. It’s an important but often ignored truthit comes to the feelings that a brand evokes. those affective memory traces are being created. Most that survey data can be valid at aggregate level and communications measurement focuses too narrowly on yet wrong about individual people. In other words, it isTo explore that last problem in more detail, products questions about the communications, and not enough invalid at respondent level. The question ‘which brandsbecome brands with appeal when they create affective on whether or not the communications are creating have you used in the past six months’ may correlatememories in the part of the brain that’s called the relevant affective associations. well with market share when aggregated up; and yet‘hippocampus’. The word ‘affective’ here means more correlate poorly with what individual respondents havethan ‘emotional’. It’s the entire complex of feeling that Why are these mistakes tolerated? actually bought. The reason for this is mutuallya brand evokes as a result of the neural tracks that form Why are such mistakes tolerated when the tracking compensating error – that is, for everyone who sayswhen people see messages about it or use it. The brain surveys they undermine represent such a significant that they used a particular brand but didn’t, there’suses these memories to bias choice in what’s known as investment on the part of clients? another person who says that they didn’t use thatthe ‘dorsolateral prefrontal cortex’. brand, but did. Share this Opinion Leader 6

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The trouble with trackingThe problem is this: the fact that these kinds of question out questions with poor respondent-level validity,have aggregate validity induces many researchers to we often find ourselves getting rid of questions thatbe careless about respondent-level validity. This in turn didn’t need to be asked anyway. In contrast, when weleads to serious mistakes when these measures are used develop new questions that can deliver respondent-levelas dependent variables. We are wrong about ‘who’ we validity we find ourselves better reflecting the way that Sourcesare talking about when we try to segment and profile consumers actually make decisions.people; and we’re wrong about ‘why’ when we try toanswer the question ‘what motivates them?’ And so TNS has started a rigorous programme of testing andwe end up making mistakes about a brand’s users and refining survey questions to deliver respondent-levelwhat drives their usage. validity. We are also leveraging mobile technology, 1. Dolnicar, Sara, and John R Rossiter (2008), ‘The low stability of heuristics and concepts such as gamification to find brand-attribute associations is partly due to measurement factors,’ International Journal of Research in Marketing, 25:2It doesn’t have to be this way new, more relevant ways of asking questions, and 2. Bettman, James R., Mary Frances Luce, John W. Payne (1998),Demanding respondent-level validity and evolving ensuring that the results are available in real-time. ‘Constructive Consumer Choice Processes,’ Journal of Consumertracking surveys to deliver it plays a major role in solving Research, 25 (December)the problems that undermine current programmes. Not We will discuss these issues in-depth in future papers. 3. Fiske, S. T. and S. E. Taylor (1991), Social Cognition (2nd edition), McGraw-Hill, New Yorkonly does it root our profiling and analysis in accurate Suffice it to say for now that trackers do not have 4. Pinker, 1998information rather than misleading aggregates, it to settle for expensively generated aggregate and 5. Chandon, Pierre, Vicki G. Morwitz, and Werner J. Reinartzalso involves cutting out a lot of irrelevant and non- retrospective data. There is another way – and we (2005), ‘Do Intentions Really Predict Behaviour? Self-generatedactionable questions in the first place. When we weed believe that it is incumbent on the research industry, Validity Effects in Survey Research,’ Journal of Marketing, 69 (April) and TNS as leaders, to deliver it. Share this Opinion Leader 7

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About Opinion LeadersOpinion Leaders is part of a regular series of articles from TNS consultants, based on their expertise gatheredthrough working on client assignments in over 80 markets globally, with additional insights gained throughTNS proprietary studies such as Digital Life, Mobile Life and the Commitment Economy.About TNS About the author Jan Hofmeyr is TNS’s leading expert on consumerTNS advises clients on specific growth strategies around new market entry, innovation, brand switching and behaviour, with a career spanning over 20 yearsstakeholder management, based on long-established expertise and market-leading solutions. With a presence advising many of the world’s best-known brands.in over 80 countries, TNS has more conversations with the world’s consumers than anyone else and understands He invented Conversion Model whilst working forindividual human behaviours and attitudes across every cultural, economic and political region of the world. the Customer Equity Company (acquired by TNS inTNS is part of Kantar, one of the world’s largest insight, information and consultancy groups. 2000), recognising a need for better quality insight on consumer motivations. In 2010, following a period of five years at Synovate, Jan returnedPlease visit www.tnsglobal.com for more information. to TNS to continue his work in this field, updating the ConversionModel methodology toGet in touch cement its position as the world’s leading measureIf you would like to talk to us about anything you have read in this report, please get in touch via of consumer commitment.enquiries@tnsglobal.com or via Twitter @tns_global Prior to working in market research, Jan was a senior political advisor for the African National Congress during and after the first democratic elections in South Africa. He is the co-author (with Butch Rice) of Commitment Led Marketing and the author of numerous, award-winning papers on brand equity. Share this Opinion Leader 8